All Falls Down
by bre.laverne
Summary: Castiel is human. Very human. And cancer is a very human thing to have.


There was no magic cure for this. No Demon deal, no spell that could halt the inevitable. He had searched, torn apart the destroyed heavens and darkened corners of hell. He was dying. Cas, angel of the lord, larger than the Chrysler building, was dying, human and very much alone. A lesson I had learned a long time ago. Everyone I've loved has died or been ripped from me. And the only thing I know about death? We face it alone.

He tried not to show it, his sunken skin hollow where his smile had fallen in, the arch of his lips cracked from a lack of moisture, he knew we didn't have much time left together.

My coat hit the floor with a thud, eliciting a slight movement from the skeletal form on the bed. He had long lost the strength to turn to me. No point anyway, the disease had stolen his sight a month ago, when I was in Canada hunting down a witch who might take my knew it would be the last time he would see me. His eyes were milky as I put a hand on his shoulder, shaking my head slowly at Sam.

"I'll f-" I turned the lump in my throat into a coughing fit "I'll find someone Cas, I promise. I will not let you die."

Slowly, as if the death itself held him back he put his discolored hand on top of mine.

"Dean" His voice a weeze, the cancer evident in his tone. "Stay, please."

My chest began the now familiar pattern of squeezing and filling my lungs and throat with the need to scream for hours at the unfairness of the world.

"I need to find som-"

He cut me off with one of his rare, pain-shaken smiles.

"Not long now"

The yacht on my chest had a motor, its rotors ripping my organs to shreds.

"Okay" Squeezing his hand, I made a rapid exit, leaving my coat on the floor as I stormed out of the shit motel. _Cas doesn't deserve to die in a place like this. _I jolted that thought to a stop by slamming my fist into the thick bark of the nearest tree. Reality pounded back into my head like a freight train and I took off, branches slicing at my skin, sweat gluing my clothes to my back and stinging my eyes, a steady burn screaming in my abused muscles as I tore through the brush.

I would up back at the motel door; heart pounding a franti staccato orchestra in my chest, sweat pouring and limbs burning with the heat of overuse as the adrenaline that had fueled my dash ebdded, leaving my body hollow, like a broken drum, lost without what made it valuable; lost without the piece of it worth saving. A piece that was coughing up blood when I re-entered the motel, Sam holding a bucket underneath his half-size form with a look of terror creasing his brow.

"How ya feelin tiger?" My attempt at enthusiasm dalling flat of my newly human audience.

"Just come... sit with me" It was the longest sentence he had managed in nearly a month, ever since the cancer had moved into his lungs. I sat in the dining chair we had moved to permenant sentry by the bed, my heart lurching when her grasped my hand feebly, blocking the urge to detach from the situation, to rip my hand out of his disfigured one and laugh about how men don't hold hands. But I don't. I sit, letting the Sam's laptop clicks by the only sound in the loaded silence. My palm entrenched in his clammy, wax like embrace. I couldn't help tracing his once strong form with my eyes, wincing at each obvious marker of his disease. The lax hair falling into his milky eyes, framed by grey and hollow skin, sunken into cavities from a lack of nutrition. Broad shoulders harrowed into points by pain and weight loss. His hips and legs tiny under the sheet, a shiver from his ever present fever tracing the same path my eyes had followed. His breathing is raspy, clinging at the precipice, a fight to inhale against the water building in his lungs and the starvation eating at his body.

Force feeding had only gone horribly wrong, I had broken his collarbone and he had yelled and refused to speak until I gave up the next day, hiding my emotions in a bottle of hunters helper that turned into two until I was raving, in drunken sobs to the trees, about the unfairness of the world. About how it should be me on that bed. A fact that still clings to the back of my mind. Why him? He had so much to do. So much to live for. A cause. All I have is a broken family and a car on the verge of falling to pieces. It should be me. It's not fair.

We stayed like that, me listening to his labored inhalations and pained exhale until they began to space further apart. He squeezed my heart with his hand against mine, "goodbye" touching his lips in a final bubble of breath that hardly escaped the blue clasp of his lips.

The bubble moved to encompass me, guarding against the horror and fear mingling with agony on the outside as Sam frantically pounded out CPR. He pushed me out of his way as he moved onto the bed, straddling Cas with his knees. My knees cried with pain as they slammed into the crap carpet, my heart the almost silent dud- dud of disbelief.

"NO" It tore itself my throat, taking on a life of its own as it swallowed up the scene. My hands touched the carpet as my scream turned into horrified sobs, my bubble lying burst on the ground following a two word diagnosis.

"No pulse" Sam had whispered, his fingertips timidly touching my shoulder.

"LIAR" His face was blurred by the saltwater river that had begun tearing itself from my eyes. He backed away as I drunkenly shoved myself into a standing position and stumbled to the bed. His hand was still cupped as if it was holding mine. And then It was, his skin cool against my burning flame. My other hand cupped the almost-stubble on his cheek, tracing the hollows. I lowered my face, kissing his blue lips like I had never dared to while he was alive.

"I love you" The whisper mirroring my heart as it broke, my tears falling onto his cheeks as I crawled up next to him. "I love you" louder. "I LOVE YOU" It was a scream that wrenched itself out of my lungs, guttural and broken. "Why didn't I say it? Dammit COME BACK SO I CAN SAY IT" This scream was almost as loud, the end tapering into sobs as I pressed my forehead to his, my sobs encompassing my body, shaking me from head to toe. "I love you" A whisper in a non-sob interval slithered out of my raw throat. "Come back you idjitt. Please. For me. Please."

The sun crawled under the blind Sam had shut hours ago, either to protect me from the light or the neighbors from seeing a full grown man lying forehead to forehead with a body, randomly pitched "I love you's" and "pleases" audible if you listened closely.

He was cold now, stiff. No hope. Bile tugged at my throat as I jolted up and ran out the front door to vomit violently into the bushes near the car, every meal in the last week removed, mixing with blood and the stench of alcohol and sweat in the cool mist of morning.

Rays of sun dance across the back of my neck, eliciting a question that continued to nauseate me further .

Where do fallen angels go? He deserved heaven and he was put through hell. It burned, the thought, agony piling on my chest like a layer of bricks. Sam found me when it had gotten dark, cold seeping into my bones, numbing some of the ache gnawing at my chest. He rested a hand on the back of my spine, ignoring my the sobs wrenching themselves out of my chest, unrelenting as waves of agony swam throughout my had lost so much, I had lost so much. Too much.

He sat with me, as the cold seeped into my chest, numbing me whole, freezing me to my spot, the agony pulsating in my chest with each heartbeat; The sun rose eventually, and we remained frozen, a testament to the end he deserved.


End file.
